Pumpkin patch

This morning it suddenly dawned on me that it is already mid-October. We have yet to get out our Halloween decorations, start making costumes, or bake anything made with pumpkin. What is going on here?? So today we got down to business. Or at least started to.

There's a farm near our house that we've visited in the fall every year for about five years now. They have pre-picked and u-pick pumpkins, plus farm animals, cider and doughnuts, fall decorations, and this year even a straw maze for the kids. They grow gigantic, misshapen pumpkin behemoths that we have no desire to set on our porch, so we never buy pumpkins from them, but we visit and enjoy their hay ride, snacks, and the general fall landscape.

But Calvin and Jon did the fall farm visit without me today because I stayed behind to watch what turned out to be a rather depressing football game. My absence may also have had something to do with the 35 mph winds in 50 degree temperatures, but I'm not letting on about that. The guys had a nice time together while I watched that oh-so-painful football game, and now the Halloween season can officially start in our house. Which means Calvin and I have two weeks to get his costume made. Here's a hint: it's going to be black and white. Guesses? It will be done in...oh, about two weeks I'd guess.

Pioneer Days

In a tiny township not far away, a well organized group of history lovers gathers every fall to present the surrounding communities with Pioneer Days. The event is put on by seasoned reenactors as well as local volunteers and even a few families who live today in the manner of yesterday.

Fall seems to me like a great time to discover history, and one of the neatest things about an event like this is being surrounded by people who really care about our past and its preservation. The reenactors are there to spend the weekend living in the world of over 100 years ago, and it is fascinating to watch them do it. Sure they're putting on a show, but it's not a start, stop, rewind, replay show like in a museum, it's a whole weekend long show, and if you stop by and see them cooking in the morning that's because they are already starting the meal they will actually eat later that night. Most reenactors are plenty happy to share information about their activities and the world in which they (are pretending to) live, while a few would rather be left alone to the living itself, teaching onlookers merely by doing.

These local, historical society organized events can be a great place to really touch, smell, hear, and believe history.

From watching the shearing of sheep, to the carding of the wool, to the spinning, and then to the booth where you can by the yarn.

Churn the butter, and taste some that was finished earlier while you're at it, then go inside and see how that butter is being used to start dinner.

Help shred cabbage for the making of sauerkraut...

help collect, clean, and press apples, then taste the cider...

Then go for a hay ride—and not just any hay ride, but a ride through the still active farm fields that belonged to the family that lived in the house you've been visiting. This is the ride the workers would have made to look over the crops, and to bring stores from the barn.

Then go around the corner to the one room school house that the children from the farm would have attended.

That's living history.

Hiking for paw paws

I had no idea what a wild paw paw was before today, but it was a hike to look for exactly those crazy fruits that was led by our county parks naturalists this morning. The weather was fabulous, the colors were just starting to come out, so we decided to drive the half hour south to join in the looking.

We'd never been to this particular wildlife preserve before today. Being a preserve, as opposed to a park, it is very wonderfully wild, and there was something very Jungle-Book-esque fabulous about hiking through undergrowth and mud and shaking trees while protecting your head in case of dropping paw paws. We actually didn't find any on the trees. Our guide said it was likely someone had already come through and harvested them, seeing as that it's public land, but we weren't entirely disappointed because, after shaking tree after tree, we were still rewarded with a taste of a nearby farmer's paw paws, and some Zingerman's Creamery Paw Paw Gelato brought by our wonderful guide.

Plus it's hard to be disappointed by a hike that, although not productive as far as fruit goes, produced much in the way of wildlife. We saw lots of animal houses—crayfish, woodchuck, snake, raccoon?—plus several wood frogs, a flicker, two praying mantises, a snail, and skippers, butterflies, bees, yadda yadda. We tried wild berries and roots, and identified a variety of native plants and trees, some of which had been stumping me for a while.

These programs are mainly designed for adults: a few miles, lots of climbing in and out of scrubby and wet areas, lots of quiet listening, looking, appreciating, and discussing. The children's programs are shorter and less physically demanding, plus they usually come with stickers and coloring pages, but Calvin enjoys both equally as well. We've been taking him on the adult hikes for about two years now, carrying him when he was still too small, but making sure that he was part of the event. To us nature is interesting for itself, not for the coloring pages, and we've wanted to share that wonder and awe with our son from day one and have included him accordingly. I will never get tired of the looks we get from some adult hikers when we show up for these events with our pint-sized hiker, and then their utter amazement when they realize that not only is he up to the challenge, he usually knows almost as much as they do about the natural world around him.

In his words:

Picking apples

Today was our first field trip. Ever. We joined our homeschooling group for a tour of a local apple orchard and came away full of cider, donuts, and good, fall fun. Our group is large enough that we divided by age, us belonging to the group of young children, of course. We took a tour of the enormous fridge full of apples (that's a big fridge, and actually that many apples in storage don't smell all that good—apple overload), then we got to watch them run the press used for making cider, and the sorter used to wash and, of course, sort the apples by size after they are brought in from the field.

The tour was standard—exactly the kind of field trip I remember from my own school years, complete with donut, cider, and coloring books. I loved the guide, who talked about how important the bees were and encouraged the kids to be respectful of their presence, not freaked. She also shared a number of interesting nature and apple tidbits with the kids before setting us loose on the orchard and allowing us to pick five apples each. At 85 degrees it wasn't exactly fall-like, but they had beautiful trees that made me happy, and Calvin got a real kick out of picking the apples.

In his words:

Fall weekend

Tailgating, football, cider mill, and a little seasonal clothes shopping. Though last week was miserably windy and cold, and yesterday's early morning tailgate left a little to be desired, by noon the sun had come out and the air was warming to an enjoyable fall temperature. It was our little village's fall festival celebration, with hay rides, cider, ponies, you name it. I missed it because I was lucky enough to be at the game, but the boys  had a great time with all the activities while I enjoyed the trouncing at the stadium. And the weather looks promising for the rest of the week, too.